Shifting Reality (ISF-Allion Book 1)

by Patty Jansen

  Melati looked around Uncle’s massive shoulders into the pan. “Mmm, gado gado. Can I have some, Uncle?”

  Uncle gave a great belly laugh. “Can’t forget my food in the squeaky wheel with all your whiteshirts, huh? The best cooking in all of JeJe.” He waved the spoon at the table. A glop of sauce flew off and landed on his ample belly. “Sit down.”

  Melati cleaned her hands in the humidivac cubicle on the wall Uncle scooped a great spoonful of vegetables dripping with sauce into a bowl, which she took to the table. She wormed herself between the wall and the table and sat down.

  She nodded at the see-through container in front of Ari. It held a tokay gecko, grey and orange spotted, with round-padded feet, bulgy eyes, a pointed snout and a long tail. “What are you doing with that?” Surely not collecting them—the station was full of them. They lived in the nooks and crannies, the ducts, and, dangerously, in the insulated tubes that held the electric wiring because it was warm.

  She added rice to her bowl and scooped up a glob with her fingers. “Are StatOp having a collection drive again?” Last time Ari had made a lot of money catching the critters.

  “Nah, no more eradication drives.” Ari twirled the container so the critter hung upside-down, waving its rubbery tail. “See how it doesn’t fall?”

  “Uh-huh,” Melati said while eating the rice from her fingers.

  “No matter how much poison StatOp uses, and no matter the hermetic seals, these crazy things always find a way in, right?”

  “Mmmm.” This time Melati had her mouth full.

  “Well,” said Ari, puffing out his chest. “I figured we’d make use of them.”

  “We tried. They taste like shit,” Uncle commented, stirring the wok.

  “Can’t you think about something besides food, Uncle?”

  Everyone laughed.

  Melati asked, “Well, then, how are they useful?”

  “We’ll make them valuable.”

  Another big belly laugh. “Impossible. Not even someone who bullshits out his arse as much as you can trick anyone into buying a gecko, Ari. They’re everywhere. Like barang-barang: invisible, everywhere and impossible to kill.”

  Grandma said without looking up, “Grandson’s new scheme is to sell ground tokay poop to New Hyderabad as the best and most exclusive new coffee.”

  Everyone laughed but Ari.

  “We tried that, too,” Uncle said. “Remember the enforcer’s face when he drank it?”

  Ari’s face twitched. He twirled the container and the gecko tried to keep its balance. “The tokay get through really small gaps. That makes them good for snooping on people. Stick a tiny camera to their back and send them into the room to record what’s happening. People would pay lots for that, especially rumak owners. Uncle would be interested.”

  Uncle turned from the stove, gave Ari a wide-eyed look, and then started laughing. “Me? There are much better ways of finding out the neighbour’s recipes.”

  “Uncle, I’m not talking about the damn cooking. What about the creditors?”

  Uncle stopped laughing. “Ari, please do us a favour and do something safe.”

  “Like mining?” Ari said, flicking his head and batting his kohl-rimmed eyes.

  Uncle sighed again.

  Grandma said, “Uncle’s too soft, young Nephew. He should take you out back and cane your naked buttocks. Messing with creditors is a fast track into jail. For you, not them. God knows you’ve come close enough already, huh?” She scraped her knife on the cutting board louder than necessary. “Maybe it’s time to come and help Uncle here, and stay away from those . . .” She didn’t say the word sekong—she never had—but everyone knew what she meant. Grandma and Ari had constant disagreements about how he dressed and what that meant and who his friends were. Not that it would ever be resolved. Ari was sekong, like so many young men of the barang-barang. Melati had seen him drinking and talking and flirting with other men often enough.

  Ari flicked his kohl-lined eyebrows and provocatively raked his hair behind his ear. His nails were painted pink. “I don’t care what you think. Nobody appreciates my ideas anyway.”

  “I’m interested,” Melati said. “But I see some problems with using tokay for spying.” Not least being that people would kill the things if they could.

  “What sort of problems? I mean—look at this.” Ari turned the container upside down again. The tokay ran to the other side, sticking to the plastic upside-down. Then he opened the lid and tapped the bottom of the container hard so the animal fell onto the table.

  “Hey! No creatures in the kitchen!” Uncle called out.

  Ari grabbed the lid and deftly scooped the animal up—they tended to drop their tails if you tried to catch them—and set it on the wall. It ran up the smooth surface to the ceiling and then, still on the ceiling, into the other room where the diners sat.

  “And now?” Melati said. “Even with a camera on its back, it’s a dumb animal. It won’t act on command.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you come in, with your mind-bending machines. I’m sure you can nuke it with some magnets or whatever, and then control it with a remote.”

  Melati laughed, but by the rings of Sarasvati, it would be wholly possible to write a code to control the animal’s motor function. Tokays were instinct-driven, so higher brain functions wouldn’t conflict with external programming. In fact, someone must have tried something like this. There had to be papers on the subject. It probably wouldn’t work for larger animals, like monkeys or dogs, but a lizard might be low enough. Even cameras small enough to fit onto its back would not be a problem. The whole idea chilled her. By God, this was dangerous.

  She shook her head. “Even if it would work, I have no access to those machines.” She’d need to use the MISAT and BCI-X scanners and they needed to be calibrated for a tiny animal, if that was possible. The B sector’s emergency med bay’s MISAT scanner, used on a lizard, would return a lot of rubbish code in lieu of missing channels. The A sector med bay had BCI-X machines but they were bolted to the wall and calibrated for tier 1 constructs. She’d need a research-style machine with a wide calibration range, which no one had stationside, and if Ari thought she’d take tokay into work, he needed to think again. The ISF ring was, mercifully, still free of the things.

  Ari said, “What do you mean, if it would work? Of course it would. If you can make human minds in that lab of yours, you can fix one tiny tokay.”

  “But I still don’t have access to the computers. I’m barely allowed sit there and watch the constructs wake up.” And, with all their science and equipment, ISF sometimes failed even there, like with Keb. Damn it.

  Uncle glanced over his shoulder. No, he didn’t like where she worked. He didn’t even like what Rina did. In the older generation, working for anyone except barang-barang—even working full stop—was frowned upon. If a girl wasn’t a miner, she was supposed to be a waitress or work in the recyclers. Most girls would have a host of children by the time they were Melati’s age, and of course she’d stuffed up in that department well and truly.

  “I could get computers,” Ari said, eyes intense. “I know someone who could get me to the scanners.”

  “Where? And will all the computers be illegal or just some of them?”

  He shrugged. “I was thinking the ones in the biolab. They’re not very busy.”

  “Ari, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! You don’t muck around the biolab with your own stuff. Besides, you don’t belong there—”

  “It’s not me doing it—”

  “I don’t care, it’s stupid and you know it. First, they won’t have what you need. Second, it’s about the only thing that enforcers will actually hurt you for if they catch you. Third: they have to be that strict, because the biolab controls our life support, and I’ll report you if I catch you meddling with their computers, and I’m serious. And fourth: who is this poor friend you’ve roped into risking his job?”

  They glared at each other. Stupid.
Ari and his friends were monumentally stupid, and bored, and quite smart with equipment, but permanently locked out of good jobs to use their skills, and so they did this sort of stupid stuff. Which was actually very smart.

  She sighed and let her shoulders slump. “Come to my apartment tonight, and I’ll see what I can do.” God help her.

  Every day Ari spent fiddling with tokay, he didn’t spend in the malampaks gambling and smoking, or in the docks smuggling and catching sexually transmitted diseases from sleazy enforcers and istel pilots. Or worse—making stupid deals with New Hyderabad merchants.

  He smiled, his face so open and genuine that she almost believed he meant it. “Thanks, Melati. I knew you’d help.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  A SHOUT CAME FROM the eating room, and chairs scraped back. A few voices protested.

  “What the . . .” Uncle put down his spoon and left the kitchen, looking concerned. Grandma muttered, “Not that again.”

  Melati went to the door and looked out.

  Two men in white uniforms stood at the door into JeJe. Tier 1 enforcers, the Taurus Army badge clearly displayed on their uniforms. One tag read Kessler and the other Heslop. She had never seen these men before. The Taurus Army must have had a personnel change.

  “Spot check,” yelled the Heslop. His Standard sounded harsh amongst the soft tones of B3.

  His Kessler mate went to the closest table, pulling a scanner from his belt. The table happened to be that of the three hypertech youths. They held out their arms and the enforcer ran the scanner over the skin. Lights flashed green. Text scrolled over the scanner’s tiny display. The enforcer said something to one of the youths who looked up. The light from the kitchen reflected in the mirror-like googly eye-goggles. The enforcer grabbed the strap and yanked them off. The youth’s black veil came off as well.

  “Hey!” The hypertech was not a him, but a her. Fatima Gusamoputri, daughter of a mining family who lived near Uncle. She rose from her seat. She was taller than most barang-barang women, but still much shorter than the enforcers. Her black eyes burned. “You have no right to do that! We have freedom of religion, agreed to by you and the council and signed by Jocar Bassanti.” Her Standard was flawless. “We take to the veil in the name of God, and if you want to know who we are, our ID tags will suffice.” She yanked the veil from his hands and rewound it about her head. Her friends also rose. The Enforcers backed off in a moment of tenseness.

  “Hey, what’s the need to disturb my customers?” Uncle said. He spoke B3; Melati rarely heard him speak Standard.

  The Heslop enforcer strode between the tables and flashed his enforcer tag, a small badge that lit up in the darkness. “Show us your ID.” In Standard.

  Grumbling, Uncle held up his arm.

  The enforcer ran a scanner over it and nodded. His colleague was doing the same with the other two hypertechs, who submitted silently to the procedure, and sat down afterwards, their manner radiating anger. Whatever came up on the screen must have been fine, because the enforcer moved onto the next table without a word. The people there—a JeJe family—already had their arms out, eyes wide.

  “What’s the need for this?” Uncle asked.

  The man didn’t even acknowledge the question, and asked in Standard, “Anyone in the kitchen?”

  Uncle jerked his head, distaste on his face. No, he wasn’t going to speak Standard, even if the enforcer didn’t speak B3, which would be unusual for a local tier 1; their managers could just load languages, never mind their B3 modules were always hilariously outdated.

  The man disappeared through the door..

  Melati could hear Grandma’s raised voice from the kitchen. None of the barang-barang liked being scanned, but she always complained openly to the enforcers about it. They’d never hurt an old woman, she said, but Melati positioned herself to see what happened, just in case.

  Grandma held out her arm, her gloved hand covered in red-orange paste.

  “No, I’m not going to take off my gloves just because you barge into my kitchen.”

  The enforcer ignored her—Melati was now fairly certain that he didn’t understand her—and touched her chilli-tinged glove to position her arm in the right place before the scanner.

  Melati met the amused gaze of Ari, leaning against the doorframe. He struggled not to burst out laughing.

  This guy was a real fresher, but he’d get his first lesson as soon as he rubbed his eyes or licked his fingers. He ran the scanner over Grandma’s arm, looked at the screen. What he saw there seemed satisfactory, so he squeezed back out the door, looking at Ari, who returned his stare with his kohl-rimmed eyes.

  The enforcer was a head taller, and looked Ari up and down, barely hiding distaste. “And what were you laughing at?” Still in Standard.

  Ari said nothing.

  The hypertech youths looked on, with Ari’s silhouette reflected in the visor of their eye-goggles. Melati understood why so many people hated talking to them. Their black clothes made them look like wraiths, and they often used sound-garblers, so that you couldn’t even recognise their voice.

  The enforcer continued, “Haven’t I seen you before? Why is it that when there’s trouble, you are around?”

  Ari glanced around. “I don’t see any trouble.” In Standard, his tone ice cool. By God, when had he learned to speak in such a broad stationside drawl?

  “Smartarse. Let’s see your ID.”

  Ari held out his arm. The enforcer scanned it, nodded and grimaced at his screen. “Smuggling, stealing, embezzlement, falsification, tampering with equipment, all before the tender age of nineteen. Could have told from that name: Rudiyanto. Troublemakers, all of them.”

  Uncle stuffed his hands in his pockets. He rarely got angry, but when he did, it was not a good idea to be around.

  “Can you just tell me what you’re doing here?” Ari said. “You’re upsetting Uncle’s business. If you want to charge me with something, then charge me, but I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve scanned my tag three times already today, the latest barely an hour ago. Do you think it will have changed in that time?”

  “Ari,” Uncle said. “Shhh.” He glared at Grandma as if it were her fault. Ari did take his defiant stance from Grandma; that was maybe why she pretended to dislike him.

  The New Hyderabad strangers on the table in the corner looked up. Their faces remained impassive. One looked at her, but she saw no guilt in his eyes. The bastard. Why didn’t the enforcers question them instead of fixing themselves on Ari?

  “Can I have your ID, Miss?” the enforcer asked.

  Melati reached out her arm. He passed the scanner over it and glanced at his screen. Froze. Met Melati’s eyes.

  He turned to his colleague, who raised his eyebrows, and the other one whispered in his ear, loud enough for her to hear, “ISF.”

  His colleague glanced Melati up and down.

  “Those characters in the corner are child smugglers,” Melati whispered.

  He nodded, but did nothing.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Ask them for travel documentation and boarding tickets. I saw them looking at pictures of girls earlier. You should investigate these people.”

  “We’re on a different operation.”

  “What the hell—different operation.” She fought to keep her voice down. “The guys are here—ask them. You know what they do to children? To the young girls they farm for babies?”

  “We have no warrant to question them.”

  “That’s never stopped you before.” She glared at him and he glared back. He had grey eyes and the usual aquiline features of a construct.

  “Ma’am, if you please—”

  Melati glanced around. The men in the corner were getting up from the table.

  “See? I’m right. They have something to hide. Stop them.” Before they ruined more lives.

  The men were now making their way between the tables towards the door. One nodded politely
to Uncle.

  The enforcer protested. “We’re not—”

  “Stop them. They’re criminals.”

  The two enforcers eyed each other, then one clipped his pocket screen back onto his belt and jerked his head at the door.

  The smugglers were already there, and the next moment had disappeared into the JeJe crowd. The two enforcers went after them at a run, jostling aside the first people waiting in line at the door.

  Good. At least someone was doing something useful today.

  Uncle stomped into the kitchen. Ari and Melati followed him. Grandma had started on a new pile of chillies.

  “I’m getting really sick of these guys,” Uncle said. “They’ve been hanging around all day making everyone nervous. Asking everyone for their ID. That makes all the customers run. Haven’t had a day as bad for a long time.”

  “The only men who ran had already paid,” Melati said. “What is there for you to be angry about?”

  Uncle glanced at the corner table. The seats had already filled up.

  “What I want to know is,” she went on, “what where they doing here? Do you know who they were?”

  Uncle rolled his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. “Will you just stop it with the crusading, Melati? I’m trying to keep my business running. I’m not in the business of judging them worthy to come in here, as long as they pay their bills.”

  “Crusading, huh? Is that what you say to the girls whose lives are ruined? The ones who can never live with a family out of shame? The ones who have injuries? Like me, huh? Where everybody pretends nothing ever happened, that I can just get a man and I’ll have a lovely family, huh?”

  Silence. Grandma chopped chillies, not looking at Melati. Ari didn’t look at her either. He fiddled with the lid of the empty container.

  Melati wrestled the flood of anger. They didn’t want to talk about this, well tough, because she wasn’t going to let it rest. Because of their apathy, she had almost died. Because of their apathy, she would never have a family.